In the light of one of the dictates of St. Teresa that says "Read and you will lead, do not read and you will be led" and of other thoughts of the same one where FALTA insists, it is necessary to remember that in the Constitutions for her religious, she always thought of a small Library Services for each convent, demanding to the nuns to know how to read, in a preponderant environment of feminine illiteracy. But the most B consequence of it, in core topic feminine cultural , was the series of nuns writers of quality that arose in the cloistered world of the Teresian Carmel. The most notable cases: first of all, the prioress of the Carmel of Seville, María de San José, a good poetess and excellent classical writer; Ana de San Bartolomé, also a poetess and great writer, a young illiterate initiated in writing by the saint herself; the exceptional case of the young Navarrese Leonor de la Misericordia (Ayanz); the Valladolid-born Cecilia del Nacimiento, an extraordinary poetess and writer; the singular case of the Riojan Ana de la Trinidad, author of an excellent collection of poems, with 19 sonnets of the highest quality. In the following centuries the series of women writers continued, both in Spain and internationally. Suffice it to mention the outstanding figures: in France, St. Therese, author of the religious book that has most influenced the spirituality of the last century, and next to her, Blessed Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity. In Germany, there is the exceptional case of Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), philosopher, poet and spiritual theologian. In Italy, the figure of Blessed Candida of the Eucharist is still recent, the author of burning writings of Eucharistic piety. In Spain, the figure of St. Maria Maravillas is also recent and A . And in South America, the delightful pens of two young and exceptional writers stand out: the Chilean Saint Teresa of Jesus of the Andes, and the charming Paraguayan Sister Felicia de Jesús Sacramentado, better known as "La Chiquitunga".

In one of the corners of the hidden Pamplona, in the cloister of the Discalced Carmelites of San José, an important collection of engraved prints acquired by Leonor de la Misericordia is preserved, together with several manuscripts of hers, particularly of the life of the founder of the Pamplona Carmel, Catalina de Cristo. Leonor was born in the ancestral palace of Guendulain in 1551, being the first offspring of the marriage formed by Don Carlos Ayanz, lord of the place, and Doña Catalina de Beaumont y Navarra. She was great-granddaughter by maternal line of the condestable of Navarre don Luis de Beaumont, third count of Lerín, by illegitimate line, because she had a son, out of wedlock, who was the grandfather of our protagonist. In his youth he acquired an exquisite humanist training with Doña Brianda de Beaumont, daughter and heiress of the Constable of Navarre, remembered by Lope de Vega in La Arcadia ( 1598), as "the divine Doña Brianda, glory of Beaumonte". After a failed marriage, apparently against her will, with her cousin Don Francés de Beaumont y Navarra, she went to Soria with Doña Beatriz de Beaumont and there she met Saint Teresa, deciding to join the Carmelites. Since she took the habit and professed, her life changed course and she strived to be a good nun. An account of her life, made years after her death, describes her in her conventual life as adorned with all the graces, because with being of clear understanding, great beauty, noble blood, knowing how to write and sing with skill, play, paint, draw and embroider with gala, cut and sew the sacred vestments for the sacristy and the habits of the nuns, she was never heard to speak in it ...... With Catalina de Cristo he came to the foundation of Pamplona and also went to the foundation of Barcelona, returning definitively to the capital of Navarre with Catalina's body in 1604. She died in the convent of place del Castillo in 1620. Father Gracián had judged her thus in 1589: "In the interior she was a seraph of condition and soul, and in the exterior an angel of face and good grace. She had skill rare in writing, painting, knowing Latin and in the other labors and exercises of women, accompanying with manly prudence".

His brothers stood out for different reasons and among all of them, in a very special way, Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont (1553-1613), a multifaceted man studied by Nicolás García Tapia, who stood out as a military man, painter, cosmographer, musician and inventor, precursor of the use and design of steam engines and air conditioning, and creator of a diving bell and even designed a submarine. His most outstanding work was the invention of the steam engine, as he registered the first patent for a steam engine in 1606.

As a writer, her fundamental work was the biography of Catalina de Cristo, composed for the most part in Barcelona in 1594 and 1595 and definitively prepared for publication in Pamplona, around 1612. From agreement are her condition of barefoot nun and woman in that misogynist society, she hid her name as the main author of the biography, although the proofs of authorship are convincing and have been proved in her study by Pedro Rodriguez and Ildefonso Adeva.

As far as his literary interests are concerned, a good testimony is the fact that he was the object of a not inconsiderable gift: a codex with the works of St. John of the Cross, before they were published in print. This was not the only time he was able to read a book first, before it was published. From other letters we know that he received several works from the General of the Italian Congregation, Father Juan de Jesús María (Calagurritano),

Also outstanding printed books came into his hands, such as the Historia evangélica of the Jesuit Jerónimo Nadal (Antwerp, 1593), one of the most relevant European publishing enterprises of the late sixteenth century, for its illustrations and its catechetical purpose, in the context of the Counter-Reformation and the special commitment of the Society of Jesus to use images in its method of prayer and catechesis. The first owner of the copy was Don Francés de Ayanz y Beaumont (1552-1614), Leonor's older brother, Lord of Guendulain, educated as a page of Philip II, Sheriff in the Court and committee of Navarre and with seat in the Courts of the Kingdom.

Another volume jealously guarded by the Carmelites is the editio princeps of the first illustrated life of Saint Teresa of Jesus, printed in Antwerp in 1613, on the eve of her beatification, at the initiative of the order and especially of the Discalced nuns established in Flanders, where there was a great tradition in the art of engraving. That edition was promoted by Mother Ana de Jesús Lobera, prioress of Brussels, and the aforementioned Father Gracián, in 1611. The engravers who received the commission were Adrian Collaert and Corniellis Galle, both known for having undertaken important projects, especially the former who produced the illustrated lives of St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis of Assisi.

As for the confirmation of the internship of the painting, there are hardly any references. Only in a letter addressed by Father José de la Madre de Dios to Leonor, from Pastrana on June 22, 1619, there is a paragraph from which something seems to be concluded in this regard. Its text reads: I esteem the register very much and I gave it to the Father companion who writes this, because it has been many days since I brought two in the breviary in the hand of Your Reverence, one of the five wounds and the other of the Blessed Sacrament with the S and the nail...". There is no doubt that both registers would be inspired by the prints that she possessed, one with such a Pamplona iconography as that of the five wounds, which make up the municipal banner since the vow made by the city in 1599, after the disappearance of the plague. Moreover, in that of the Blessed Sacrament, we can look for the graphic source in which he was inspired to make the small register, in a print of the collection or in some engraving of a letter of slavery or aggregation in some sacramental confraternity, very abundant in those moments of Eucharistic fervor.

The set of prints he collected is of great interest, both for the rarity and exceptionality of some of them, as well as for their chronology and provenance. Leonormant corresponded with religious of his Order, stationed in different parts of Europe, as well as with other prominent figures in politics and the Church. Among the personalities that sent engravings to him we will emphasize Father Domingo de Jesús María, (Calatayud, 1559-Vienna, 1630) that passed to Italy in 1604, occupying the generalate of the Italian Congregation, in 1617, Mother Mother Inés de Jesús (Tapia), cousin of Santa Teresa and prioress of Medina del Campo and Palencia, Don Guillén de San Clemente, ambassador of Spain in Prague from 1581 until his death in 1606, the bishop of Tarazona and confessor of Saint Teresa Fray Diego de Yepes, Mother Ana de San Bartolomé, prioress of Brussels and Antwerp and Father Gracián de la Madre de Dios, confessor of Saint Teresa.

The location of the engravings, in the factitious volume, obeys a certain criterion of thematic and even chronological order, always taking into account the devotions in those times of the first stage of the Counter-Reformation, austere moments, in which the triumphal Baroque had not yet been present and, therefore, neither had the trickery of rhetoric and propaganda. For the most part, the iconographies of the series have not yet made the quantitative and qualitative leap towards interpretations typical of the Baroque century: ecstasies, apotheosis and glories, because it was a time of containment, immediately after the Council of Trent. For their quality and notoriety, the images of the fourteen holy martyrs stand out, which were edited by Jean Sadeler, with drawings by Martin de Vos and belonged to a series entitled Speculum Pudicitiae. Contemplatio sanctarum castarumque virginum, made by the aforementioned masters, of which copies are preserved in Brussels, Cambridge, Milan, Munich, Paris and Vienna. Some of Martin de Vos' drawings are dated between 1584 and 1585. Themes such as the Immaculate Conception, some Spanish Marian devotions, or St. Francis Xavier and St. Ignatius of Loyola, in extremely rare early engravings, can be seen in this unique set.

Leonor's fondness for engraved images led her to illustrate the manuscript copies of one of her works, the Life of Catalina de Cristo, founder of Soria, Pamplona and Barcelona, with ad hoc engravings, in relation to the subjects of the different chapters. In Navarre he was more than a hundred years ahead of the great publishing companies with engraved prints alluding to the subject matter of their contents, as was the case with the edition of the Annals of Navarre by Moret y Alesón, in its 1766 edition.